PeoriaBJJ Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 PeoriaBJJ’s HHN23 Review (formatting stolen from one of you guys) I went 3 nights… 10/3-10/4-10/5 so I got to go through all the houses 3 times. I also did the UTH tour on 10/4 at 2pm. Maybe some of you were in David’s group (little short guy with goatee)? I was the tall guy with the short wife! Houses 1. Cabin in the Woods Ok I have watched this movie a few times and I’m the first to admit I don’t think it’s a great film. BUT, and this is a big ole but…. This house was AWESOME!!!!! It was the very first house we went into. It’s was an all-out assault on your senses. The scares were there, the props were there, the elevator scene was there! Everything about this house was excellent. The story was told very nicely in this maze. The detail was so good. Some nice little Easter eggs in there too, from and old ZAP sign from Zombiegeddon to Jack and the Caretaker at the end (up high). When Buckner comes running down the hall with that axe… whoa! Awesome!!! This was in the UTH tour and going through this looking at everything was quite an experience too. I thought to myself “if all the houses are like this its gonna be unreal!” I’m giving this house a 10/10. 2. Evil Dead Another excellent effort by the A&D guys! They really knocked it out of the park with this maze! While the entrance was kinda a weird set up with the back of the SS being illuminated with a red light and some create design it was kinda nice to cool off from the heat before entering this maze. I dug the the giant sheets with the pages from the Necroromicon. I told my wife if those end up on ebay I’m buying one. But it was cool to see! The famous scenes were very well done from the celler door, to the arm getting cut off, to the blood puke scene, to the mouth cutting…. But the final scene was EPIC. The blood rain, the jeep, the chainsaw, the cabin on fire…. Man what a great ending to a great house! Well done! I’m giving this house a 9/10. 3. Resident Evil: Escape from Raccoon City Ok I will preface this with… I don’t play video games. Even as a kid (I’m 36 now) my parent bought us Nintendo, Segas, etc and we never played them. So I don’t know shit about RE. And honestly I didn’t even look up info in this house. I thought I’d walk into cold and see what happens. I have seen bits and pieces of the movies on TV so I kinda knew what to expect. Opening scene was pretty blah. But going into the pizzeria it got pretty cool with the scenery. I did LOVE the zombie (?) Dobermans though. I have a Doberman so when we went through this house we’d always say “Hi Chaney!” to the dogs! The one coming out of the shirt rack was a cool scare too. I really liked the Nemesis that was up high with the 20mm minigun. Cool effect with the air blast when it was firing. I wasn’t really feeling the static creatures hanging from the walls. They were cool looking and all but motionless creatures you can see at the local hween store. The helicopter was cool as hell and a couple times the girls playing the heroine looked good Overall a good house but nothing to write home about. Maybe if I was a video game nerd it would have been a little better. I’m giving this house a 5.5/10 4. Havoc: Derailed I wasn’t really a fan of the first HAVOC house a few years ago so I really wasn’t stoked for this storyline specifically. But I’m always stoked going into a house at HHN. As some have said before it takes way too long to get into the action. The room definitely tells a story though. The action just wasn’t really there. The actors did a great job of keeping the intensity up but guys jumping out with a gun just doesn’t scream haunted attraction for me. Now I’m 6’5” and looked UP to a couple of those big guys in there so that was definitely something different for me! Now that I’m done complaining about the story let’s get to the scenery. BOOM! The room and sets were totally awesome for this maze. Everything was very convincing! Seeing a trains wheels and axels was rad as hell. I really liked looking around this maze! I’m going to give this house a 6.5/10 5. Urban Legends: La Llorona I wasn’t familiar with the La LLorona urban legend. SO I looked it up and and thought ‘damn that’s gonna be a dark house!”. And IT WAS! Everything about this house was cool to me. The façade out front was remarkable. I took a daytime pic of the front of the house and cropped it and you’d swear I was somewhere in Mexico in a little town no one had heard of. Now I have a 5 month old daughter. She’s my first and I guess I’m still at an emotional stage with her being new and all (or I’m just a huge p**sy) so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel walking through this house. But it was all good. You really get submerged into whats happening in this house. This house has it all… completely awesome sets, cool soundtrack, good scares, great costumes, a good story line, dead kids (????). When it was first announced I thought us getting a hand me down from Hollywood was a cheap way out of giving us something better. I was WRONG. This was a great house from start to finish. I did this house on the UTH tour also. Very interesting house to say the least. I would love to see the Urban Legends franchise take off! I’m going to give this house a 9/10. 6. Afterlife: Death’s Vengeance Meh… lets start at the beginning. Great music. We got some killer old school blues and a lot of Johnny cash! You really cant go wrong with either. I kinda like what they are doing with the fronts of this sprung tent. The black and white, news paper/illustrations, etc. I thought it was cool with the Poe house and with Alice Cooper so I liked the façade of this house as well. (Bonus was his prison number was actually my birthday if you put the 77 at the end!). I thought the idea of a killer being waited on by his victims in the afterlife was a killer idea. But honestly I’m not sure it was totally pulled off within the house. I just considered this a cool house to go through and look at everything. The opening scene was good with the electrocution and that fact that the wardens name is actually the REAL name of Borris Karloff was a nice nod to the classics. I really don’t mind 3D houses, in fat the In-Between is one of my favorites, but I think this one just fell a little short. I really did enjoy it but again just as a cool house to look around in. I’m going to give this house a 6/10. 7. The Walking Dead: No Safe Haven This house is a HUGE improvement over last years flop house. Although it seems they kinda did everything in reverse chronologically. The front façade was the scene where the people would fight the zombies with no teeth. Not exactly a famous (but definitely memorable) to start out with. I was really expecting to see the prison after I rounded the corner, but whatever. Still a cool scene. The inside of the maze was really cool. I like how the wrapped around the one scene with all the fencing to use the HHN goers to make it look like it was packed with zombies. That was a good idea and a good use of the patrons. The final room was the prison block. VERY well done! Great cameos by Merle and Herchel’s foot too! LOL Over all a really cool house. Kudos for stepping it up this year! I’m going to give this house an 8/10. 8. American Werewolf in London We purposely saved this house for last every night. Ok so being a complete geek about AWIL I had already decided this was going to be the greatest maze in the history of all mankind before I even got on the plane to FL. Well…. I was right. I LOVE literally every single thing about this maze. The story Jack and David is told perfectly. No wonder John Landis loved it and helped in its creation. The Slaughtered lamb was insanely detailed, the hospital was great with a couple good scares, Piccadilly was perfect, the wolf shadow was a great foreshadow… but the wolves. OMG these wolves were terrifying. This was the only house Ive been in where I felt actual anxiety. Where that first wolf pops out of the wall and the sound of it snarling are coming out at 10000 decibels its straight up scary. Period. All I could thing was ‘If this thing was real... I'm f**ked.' They did the best possible job on this house. I will say it now... and all you IP haters be damned... this is my new favorite of all time HHN house. Perfectly executed! the scares, the rooms, the WOLVES! I am going to give this house an 11/10. It's my scale and I'll do what I want TWD Street Experience: I will admit that I'm getting a little burned out on TWD at HHN. I know its a huge money maker yadda yadda yadda but hopefully this is it for them. With that said I really enjoyed the street experience. A good variety of different scenes. i was lucky enough to see the zombie bomb truck as we were walking out on our last night. VERY COOL! the barn and well walker were WELL done, the safe zone was great, the tank scene was great and I got see the girl get chased and bitten on the tank. I actually took the time to film all the scare zones for this year. I will upload them here when I can get around to it. This was a HUGE improvement to last years hordes failure. The scaractors really stepped it up for the streets this year! Well done! TWD Street Experience gets an 8.5/10 AWARDS BEST HOUSE: American Werewolf in London BEST STORY: American Werewolf in London BEST SETTING: American Werewolf in London BEST SCARES: American Werewolf in London WORST HOUSE: Afterlife: Death’s Vengeance WORST STORY: Resident Evil WORST SETTING: Afterlife: Death’s Vengeance WORST SCARES: Afterlife: Death’s Vengeance MOST UNIQUE: Cabin in the Woods Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeoriaBJJ Posted October 9, 2013 Author Share Posted October 9, 2013 (edited) Shows: Rocky Horror: I dislike that movie so I never watch it. Bill and Ted: pretty bland like it has been for years but still got a few decent laughs. Kudos to whomever signs up those girls! DANG! Me gusta! Edited October 9, 2013 by PeoriaBJJ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuitaChris Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 Great review. Really enjoyed your take on HHN and gets me pumped for this Sat night 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeoriaBJJ Posted October 9, 2013 Author Share Posted October 9, 2013 Great review. Really enjoyed your take on HHN and gets me pumped for this Sat night Thanks!!!! And Trust me... You'll enjoy this year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeoriaBJJ Posted October 10, 2013 Author Share Posted October 10, 2013 (edited) I just thought of something to bitch about... The amount of Uni employees in the houses waving their hands hurrying people through. Sometimes it's necessary but 90% of the time it wasn't and that shit really takes you out of the moment. I give that a -53975/10. Edited October 10, 2013 by PeoriaBJJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coast Posted October 10, 2013 Share Posted October 10, 2013 (edited) Nice review, glad to see someone else had just as much fun as I did. Pretty much my thoughts exactly for everything, except me giving Havoc and RE those ratings would be a little bit too generous. Also, you were way too modest with AWIL. It was at least a 14/10. Bill and Ted: pretty bland like it has been for years but still got a few decent laughs. Kudos to whomever signs up those girls! DANG! Me gusta! I agree with this guy. When that opening number started, and there were hot, half naked chicks wearing skimpy horror icon costumes, I just looked up to the sky and said "thank you". Edited October 10, 2013 by Coast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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